Death Comes Calling (Ranger Book 3)

by Darrell Maloney

  “But he also said the other men have a lot of respect for you. That they look up to you, because you’re so dedicated to your job.”

  Randy actually started to blush.

  Brandy laughed.

  “Oh, now Randy,” she said. “Don’t you go getting all embarrassed on me. I’m not telling you this to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Then you’re failing miserably. Exactly why are you telling me this then?”

  “I’m just making an observation. It strikes me as a surprise that you’d look forward to coming over here every few days to help us. I mean, I thought you’d much rather be doing Ranger stuff.”

  “Helping you is Ranger stuff, silly girl. You guys are doing a great service to the city. You’re giving the citizens the means to survive, not just the winter, but in the years ahead.

  “You’re purveyors of hope. You’re giving them the tools they need to survive. And by going along with you, providing you security, I’m a part of that too. The Rangers have assigned me to you every few days. Therefore, this is Ranger work as much as anything else.”

  “You don’t miss working the streets, helping little old ladies fetch their medicine and keeping bad guys from raping and pillaging?”

  “Oh, I enjoy that too. But that work is very taxing. More and more these days I’m burying bodies more than anything else. It’s emotionally draining. It wears me down. When I come along with you guys I see the smiles on faces of people who were on the verge of giving up. And then y’all come along and tell them how they’re gonna survive the winter. And then how they’re gonna grow their crops and survive until next winter. And the winter after that. And how each winter and new spring will be a bit easier than the one before.

  “As I said, you’re purveyors of hope. It’s heart-lifting for me to be a part of that, and I look forward to coming to help.”

  She repeated his words.

  “Purveyors of hope. I kinda like that.”

  “Now,” Randy said while nodding to a rather odd-looking trailer hooked to the back of their wagon. “Tell me what this is about.”

  Chapter 47

  Randy dismounted and walked over to inspect the rig.

  It was a flatbed trailer, eight feet wide and about ten feet long, with a wooden tongue attached by pintle hook to the back of the wagon.

  The single axle beneath it appeared to have come from a pickup truck.

  “They’ve pulled us off the hose and water pump detail,” Brandy explained.

  “Starting today we’re working a new project.”

  “Do tell?”

  “Yes. The trailer was made by some of the agricultural students to haul drums?”

  “Drums? As in musical instuments?”

  He was kidding. She could tell by his grin. But she played along anyway.

  “No, dummy. As in fifty-five gallon drums. The ones used to store industrial solvents and chemicals and oil and stuff.”

  “Okay…”

  “There used to be an Air Force base out west of town. Reese Air Force Base. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes. When I was a kid my folks took me out there to watch the air shows.”

  “It closed in the 1990s, when Congress was trying to save money and downsized the military. It was given to the city, who pieced it out to various colleges and manufacturing plants.”

  “Is that where we’re going?”

  “Yes. On the backside of the base is a manufacturing plant called ‘Westex Containers.’ For years they made fifty-five gallon drums, then shipped them all over the country. Most of them went to the refineries around Galveston and Corpus Christi, where they were filled with jet fuel and sold to the military.

  “Anyway, Westex Containers has decided they’re out of business for the foreseeable future. They have no power to make new drums, and no way to transport them if they did.

  “They’ve graciously decided to donate their entire inventory to the city for rain collection.”

  “How many are we talking about?”

  “A little over four thousand.”

  Randy whistled.

  “That’s a lot of drums.”

  “Yep. There’s an old airplane hanger on the far side of the base that’s chock full of them, almost all the way to the ceiling.

  “Texas Tech sent a team of men out there two weeks ago to start working them.”

  “Start working them how?”

  “I asked the same question. It’s nice to know great minds really do think alike.”

  She smiled, then continued.

  “The high-lift forklifts they used to stack the drums no longer work. The first problem they had to solve was how to unstack them without damaging them too badly. As I said the stacks were pretty high. Almost forty feet in some places.

  “Their initial thought was to just climb up and push them off the stack one at a time. In fact, they tried that. But it dented the drums terribly, and broke the seams on some of them so they would no longer hold water.

  “Then they remembered they were students of one of the best technological universities in the world.

  “So they went back and rethought the whole thing. They had a couple of guys climb into the rafters and install a system of pulleys. Then they lowered each drum one at a time to the hanger floor.

  “Their second problem was that the drums were sealed, except for two bung holes on the top of each one. That made them unsuitable for collecting rainwater runoff from the roof of a house.

  “So the structural fabrication class sent a team of men out there with blow torches to cut the tops off of each drum.”

  “So the funny looking trailer is so we can carry more drums back with each load?”

  “Precisely. We did some figuring, because after all we’re college kids and that’s what we do.

  “We determined that we could only carry fourteen of the drums in the bed of the wagon, and that’s if we stacked them three high.

  “With the trailer we can carry a total of forty eight.”

  “And weight’s not a factor?”

  “No. The drums themselves are actually fairly light when they’re empty.

  “The driving factor is the distance. It’s roughly fifteen miles round trip. One load per day. By the time we get back the horses will need a rest and so will we.

  “So today we’re taking three rigs out there to bring back a total of 144 drums. They’ll spend the night here on campus, and tomorrow we’ll distribute them around the city.”

  “Who came up with this idea?”

  “Ordinarily I’d take credit for it, but actually it came from St. Louis.”

  “St. Louis?”

  “Yes. You see, the mayors of all the major cities around the country are communicating now. Well, not all of them, but the ones who’ve been able to procure working ham radios.

  “They’re sharing what they call ‘best practices’ to survive the blackout. If one city has a great idea to help their people, they’re sharing those ideas with their counterparts in the other cities.

  “Apparently there’s a factory in St. Louis that used to manufacture similar drums. They donated them to the city of St. Louis, which is passing them out to their residents for rainwater collection.

  “They shared the idea with Mayor Haislett, who worked out a similar arrangement with Westex Containers.”

  “It’s nice to see everyone working together to help one another get through this thing.”

  “Exactly. But that’s only part of it. We’ve been able to share our own ideas. We’ve got cities all over the country now running water hoses and water pumps from their playa lakes to nearby neighborhoods and clear-cutting their yards for crops.”

  “So as each day goes by the long-term outlook looks a little brighter and brighter.”

  Brandy smiled.

  “Yep. Well, you said it yourself. You may look like a cowboy and I may look like a college student. But what we actually are is purveyors of hope.”

  Chapter 48

 
The former Reese Air Force was several miles from Texas Tech University. The ride was mostly rural along a four lane road with cotton fields on both sides.

  The blackout had come just as stripping season was beginning. A few farmers were able to get their crops in and to market, but most never got the chance.

  Most of them were watching their crops deteriorate in the fields, their hard work going to waste.

  What made it even more sad was that it was a bumper cotton crop. The weather in the early growing season had been pitch-perfect. Just the right amount of sunny days and rainfall. The bolls were overstuffed with the fluffy stuff, and farmers had been counting on their best yield per acre in two decades.

  Without machinery to strip it from the dying plants, it would rot in the fields.

  Farmers in that part of Texas depended on their crops to support their needs for the entire year. Most had crop insurance, but they’d have a hard time collecting since the insurance companies had shuttered their doors along with everyone else.

  It wasn’t surprising, then, that the suicide rate in small rural communities was three times what the big cities were experiencing.

  It shouldn’t have been surprising, either, that Randy and the students he was escorting came upon two farmers headed into town on foot.

  In Texas before the blackout, people still picked up hitchhikers. People still waved to one another as they passed each other on country roads.

  They still stopped to help change the flat tires of strangers, and many people still carried jumper cables in the trunks of their cars. Even if their cars were brand new and their own batteries weren’t likely to go bad for years.

  The world might be a totally different and inhospitable place now in some parts of the world.

  But in Texas, Texans still took care of their neighbors.

  “Brandy, let’s give these guys a ride,” Amy suggested. “I don’t mind walking a while.”

  “I don’t either,” Tony offered. “They look like they need a break from it.”

  The pair hopped down and the two farmers climbed aboard.

  The bench seat was actually built for two with a little room left over. But the farmers were rail thin and Brandy was a petite girl herself.

  They were cozy but not crowded.

  And the farmers didn’t mind at all sitting next to a pretty Tech co-ed.

  After all, it was very well known that Texas girls were the prettiest girls in the country.

  And Lubbock, it was said, had more than its fair share of the prettiest.

  “I’m Brandy. How far are you guys going?”

  “I’m Jacob. This is my brother Kyle. As far as you can take us would be great. We’re going to talk to the mayor. Didn’t expect to get there until tomorrow, but you’ll save us a bit of time. I reckon we’ll get there tonight and be waiting for him to come in first thing in the morning.”

  Brandy was curious.

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why would you come all the way into downtown Lubbock just to talk to Mayor Haislett?”

  “Mostly to kill time. You see, there’s nothing to do on the farm anymore. Our mom and dad are still there, reading the same magazines over and over again and tending to the livestock. Dad tinkers with his equipment several hours a day, thinking he can get it running again somehow. But he’s no closer today than he was the day everything went dark.

  “We’ve been trying to tell him even if he got the stripper running and brought in his crop, there’s no way to get it to the gin and the gin’s closed down anyway.

  “He says he knows all that. That he’s not trying to fix the equipment to use it, but rather to have something to do.

  “Kyle and I, we figured we’d strike out for town and talk to the mayor. See if the city was hiring. We got word some of the other cities are hiring extra help to bury bodies and such, and are paying off with food rations or parcels of land.

  “We figured shoot, if we could find something useful to do to occupy our time, and get something to show for it at the same time, it sure beats sitting on the farm watching the cotton rot.”

  “We’re heading out to the old Air Force base to pick up a load,” Brandy said. “If you’ll help us load it, we’ll haul you all the way to city hall.”

  Jacob looked at Kyle who said, “Why not? Sounds like a good deal to me.”

  “I don’t know,” Jacob teased. “Seems to me we should ask some more questions. Like maybe what these nice folks are picking up. I mean, helping load a wagon full of fluffy bed pillows is one thing. But what if they ask us to load a dozen circus elephants? Or a thousand lead bars? Or twenty tons of bricks?”

  “Oh, stop. You’d load all that stuff and more just to impress these girls and you know it.”

  “Yeah, I suppose I would at that.”

  Brandy brought an end to their foolishness by saying, “We’re picking up a bunch of empty drums. They’ll be going to a neighborhood in Lubbock to catch rainwater, so they can water their crops.”

  “Crops? What kind of crops are they growing in the city limits now? ‘Cause if it’s cotton, tell them they’re wasting their time. It can’t be harvested and the gins are all closed anyway.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Jacob. You can’t eat cotton.”

  Brandy said, “Actually, they’re not growing anything yet. We’re just getting the neighborhoods prepared. They’re currently clear-cutting their yards and tilling them up with pull-start tillers. In the spring they’ll be given a variety of seeds. Mostly wheat and corn, but each block will be given several other vegetable seeds as well.

  “One block might get tomato and cucumber seeds, the next block might get squash and onions, the next block might get carrots and beans .

  “They’ll be encouraged to barter with each other so that everyone will get a balanced diet.

  “The Ag Department is also negotiating with several farmers to plant potatoes next spring instead of cotton. Did you know the west Texas soil is well suited for below-ground crops? Lubbock’s first two crops were potatoes and peanuts.”

  “Really? How do we get added to that list?”

  “Mention it to the mayor while you’re there. He can point you to the right people.”

  “And if we grow potatoes the city will purchase our entire crop?”

  “You’d have to ask the city how it works, but that’s my understanding.”

  “We might be able to help the city in another way as well.”

  “How so?”

  “This whole region sits atop the Ogallala Reservoir. There’s enough water beneath us to irrigate the whole darn city.”

  “Yeah. We knew that. But how do we get it out?”

  “You do the same thing the farmers do. You drill wells around the city.”

  “You got a drill rig in your back pocket, do you?”

  “Nope. But I know where one is. There was a drill team putting in a new well at a friend’s farm near Shallowater, a few miles north and west of us. They abandoned the rig when the power went out and just left it in the field.

  “It’s powered by a small block engine. We were looking at it the other day 'cause we were thinking about pulling the engine and repairing it, then replacing a burned up motor in one of our pickup trucks.”

  “You know how to do all that?”

  “Shoot. We’re farmers. We can fix damn near anything. We think if we replace the brushes in the starter and replace the battery and cables we can get it running again. It’s an old school motor. No electronic fuel injection system or any other fancy mumbo jumbo.”

  “Does it travel?”

  “You can tow it with this rig or another rig like it.”

  “Would you mind talking to the people at the Tech Agricultural Department about it before we take you downtown? That’s something I suspect they’d love to make happen”

  “Shoot. You lead the way, and we’ll follow. We’ll follow a pretty girl anywhere, won’t we Kyle?”

  “Yep. Darn sure will.”

  Chapter
49

  Most people outside the plains of the central United States couldn’t identify a prairie dog if the tiny creature shared a line-up with a half-dozen urban rappers.

  Prairie dogs have inhabited the plains longer than Native Americans. They’re about the size of a squirrel, but have no bushy tail. Their tails are more Chihuahua than squirrel, and tend to wag when approached by humans.

  They also emit a loud “yipping” sound which early settlers in the area equated to a dog’s barking.

  Hence the name… “prairie dog.”

  Most people consider the animal rather cute, bordering on adorable. That’s ignoring its most worrisome attributes. It carries mites and fleas and lives in borrows similar to gophers, and is constantly digging up the west Texas landscape.

  Dating back to the middle of the 19th century, one of a horse’s greatest hazards when trekking across the plains – even a greater threat than rattlesnakes – was prairie dog holes.

  Many a horse was crippled, many a rider thrown, when an unfortunate horse galloping along stepped in a prairie dog hole and broke a leg.

  That same hazard exists today, although on a much smaller scale. Most of the prairie dogs have been pushed out of the cities and into surrounding fields and prairies.

  In less developed areas of large cities, however, and at many city parks, the little critters still find a home.

  Horses and riders also tend to be few and far between in urban and suburban areas.

  At least that was the case before the blackout.

  Post-apocalypse, the Texas Rangers weren’t the only ones who were using horses as a means of transportation in the city of Lubbock.

  So were Lubbock County Sheriff’s deputies, constables and several dozen city dwellers with connections to area ranchers.

  As Ranger Randy finished up a long day of transporting empty drums to the Texas Tech campus, then escorting two hapless ranchers downtown to the city hall building, he got a call on the radio from his detachment HQ.